on not writing christmas cards

by haywardhelen

Every year the list of people I send Christmas cards to gets shorter. Every year I put off writing them until closer to the postal cut-off date. Writing Christmas cards has come to feel like an admission that the year is ending, a feeling of defeat that may explain why I put off writing them.

When I finally do put pen to card I know, when I take the envelopes to the post office today, that – like everyone else’s cards in the post office – mine won’t arrive in time. I know they’ll be opened as afterthoughts, as well-intentioned yet misguided gestures.

I’m not the only one who feels overwhelmed by the festive season, who feels convinced that each year the rate at which the months roll speeds up. Even my kids feel this. Nor am I the only one whose heart sinks when gold tinsel goes up in the town square a full month before Christmas, who cynically thinks that buying things is a commercial sleight of hand designed to distract us from Trump’s new appointments, the crisis in Aleppo and a new coal mine in Queensland that risks bleaching what’s left of our Great Barrier Reef.

My mother used to write Christmas cards under a tree by a friend’s pool while my sisters and I mucked about in the water. Having grown up in the country my mother always insisted that she couldn’t swim. Looking back I can see that writing Christmas cards under a shady tree – engaging with absent friends and ticking names off her To Do list – gave her more satisfaction than cooling off with us in the pool. Just as she gave half a dozen bottles of beer to the postman, and a box of shortbread to her hairdresser, she knew the right thing to do at Christmas.

I am similar in age to my mother when she wrote Christmas cards by the pool. My To Do list is shorter than hers ever was and I’ve never given half a dozen beers to the postman. Moreover these days my Christmas card list has whittled down to a manageable ten.

Even so this year I struggle to write Christmas cards. Because this year my life has got the better of me. This year I’ve felt as overwhelmed by my family as I did when my children were toddlers. These days my children, now teenagers, demand things of me that I can’t give – even as they reject my efforts to provide them.

I’ve always struggled to describe an entire year in a hundred words inside a Christmas card. I find it even harder this year. Because this year it’s clear to me that my life isn’t going to plan. There is nothing wrong with my life, most of which I’m very happy with. It’s just that over the course of this year I’ve realised that the things which seem to come out of nowhere, to excite and unsettle me, are the stuff of my life. They aren’t things that I’ll ever recover and move on from. They are my life. And this awareness changes everything. It makes catchy summings in Christmas cards up impossible.

When my daughter saunters into the kitchen yesterday afternoon I moan to her that I can’t get myself to write Christmas cards. She tells me airily not to bother. ‘But I still want to’, I say, wanting to explain. ‘We could make potato print cards,’ she suggests, trying to be helpful. I roll my eyes in response, hoping that she can’t see my face – potato prints at the kitchen table being as far from what I feel like doing at that moment as a weekend in space.

Ten minutes later she brings in the mail and I open a demand to pay a water bill that I’ve overlooked in the craziness of these last few months. Trawling through paperwork in my study I discover that my car insurance is also four months late. I knew I’d been lax in keeping our accounts, I knew I’d been sticking my head in the sand. Even so I felt amazed that four whole months had slipped through my fingers leaving hardly a mark in my accounting book.

I sat up late last night. After putting all my paperwork on my study floor I forced myself to order it into piles. I attempted to make good our household accounts. I wrapped up Christmas presents and put them under the tree. I made a To Do list for today. I addressed the four most important Christmas cards that I’d already written and addressed envelopes for a few more.

In the cards that I’d written in a moment of peace in a café, earlier that day, I didn’t sum up my year. I didn’t list my kid’s achievements or my husband’s travels. I didn’t mention my writing projects. I kept it simple. I wrote about our garden made lush by spring. And the building work on our old house that is at last finished. I wrote about driving interstate for my daughter’s sailing regatta on Boxing Day in ten days’ time, and about my plan to have a Christmas picnic with my near-blind ninety-year-old aunt. And I left it at that.

It was late when I went to bed, and I lay awake for a while. It was done. I’d pulled my head from the sand and the panic that goes with keeping it there had ceased. I could feel my desire for Christmas distinct from the demands that – when I’m stressed – they so easily turn into. I could hear the wind in the trees outside the window. I had let the year come to an end – the moon outside was full – and made my peace with this my funny lovely life.

Personally I was always into giving Christmas gifts when I was young. But then as maturity followed I realised that time and support are the two most valuable things we can give each other. No doubt , presents keep relationships warm. But over the years I have come to a realisation that people compensate their time with gifts and evaluate love with gifts. So this year go and spend time with people who matter. ❤

Lovely…I know many people who don’t write Christmas cards nor can they stand the fact that there are people who still do. In the last six years, the number of cards I write and send has decreased dramatically from over 80 to 40. Only a dozen or so get holiday letters included (with family update) in the cards; yet everyone gets their own personal thoughts. I love your honesty. Thank you for sharing

This post was so beautifully written. I have given up on sending Christmas cards for the reasons you mentioned in the beginning. It just seemed like one more chore to add to the never-ending list of Christmas to-do’s…but I’m rethinking it now, thank-you!

Beautifully written Helen. Sending christmas cards to our loved ones used to be a Christmas ritual when I was young. I loved seeing the handwritten notes , loved rubbing the cards with glitter on my hands and watch them sparkle…Such a lovely tradition..I used to collect them and still open the box of cards when I go home. I don’t remember the last time I sent a card to someone. I didn’t even know they were available in regular shops anymore! But I did receive one this year from a dear friend who knew I liked the sentiment…It felt lovely. So I hope I’ll start this tradition again for Christmas 2017!

So funny to come across this, here is my exact FB status that I had just written about an hour before reading your post:
“FYI TO ALL: I AM TERRIBLE AT SENDING HOLIDAY CARDS, SO, IF YOU WERE UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU MIGHT RECEIVE ONE VIA SNAIL MAIL (ESP IF I ASKED FOR YOUR ADDRESS AGAIN, SPECIFICALLY, LOL), AND YOU DIDN’T GET IT, WELL, NOBODY ELSE DID EITHER. SORRY! THEY ARE ON MY KITCHEN TABLE. I HAVE PROBLEMS. ;p
BUT THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SENT THEIR OWN LOVELY CARDS TO US!!!
I LOVE YOU ALL. <3"

And I am not even one who writes the Christmas "letter." It's literally just a matter of putting the pic in the envelope and addressing it, for most anyhow. I feel that I should write in more detail about the life of my family to some, especially our older relatives, but it's so taxing…or I'm just so lazy. Or really, I was never that into it. I'm new to the "homemaker" style game…so I don't even have a garden to write about.

Anyhow, I found you post to be in sync so much with a lot of my own feelings, and it was a nice read. Thank you for sharing. 🙂

It’s amazing how life has changed so quickly over the past few decades. Sometimes it can become so overwhelming and I’m not sure I’ll ever be the type to write Christmas cards. I am however considering getting everyone’s email addresses and sending out a “card” that way.. seems a lot easier and less stressful!

It’s the stress of it – entirely in our heads – that I was trying to describe. It’s not just the change in patterns of communication. Even with instant ways of getting in touch with each other, we still feel this unconscious urge to make amends with imaginary others through christmas cards, or whatever. It has been comforting realising how many other people feel this too – and it has very little to do with convention and religion.

Well done for breathing! I didn’t bother with Christmas cards this year either. Family and funds I decided to keep above the water line instead of worrying about colleagues and long lost relatives and friends I can quite easily chat to on line. Could Christmas cards really be a thing of the past?

I went through the same thing this past Christmas. I ended up not sending out cards – like big Sunday dinners, family nights of Monopoly this was another tradition that I have let slide…. Living in Germany I am amazed at the staunch resolution to keep traditions strong. Public holidays are plentiful and the beer keeps flowing.